What do you make of the Obama administration giving Shell Oil permission to drill in the Arctic Sea off the coast of Alaska? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? I contemplate that question every time I fill up my midlife Chrysler and curse the pump prices. Living in oil rich Bakersfield doesn’t help much. In addition to producing fruits, nuts, air pollution and country western music, we extract about ten percent of the nation’s petroleum. But the costs are nearly as high here as everywhere else.

It’s not just for gasoline, either. We rely on oil to make almost everything, from toothpaste to Teddy bears to tennis shoes. And that’s not even all the stuff that starts with T.

At the same time, we’re encouraged to become energy independent. But what about the risks? Here’s what the president said about drilling in the Arctic:

“The two years of drilling that we want to do up there will be to identify how many resources are there. Once we know that, then we can think about a development program, think about all the technology and the regulatory permits and everything else that goes into a development.”

Oh, I’m sorry, that wasn’t the President of the United States. It was the President of Shell Oil, Marvin Odum, in an interview on CNBC.

Those guys always tell us they’ll be careful. And then there’s the Exxon Valdez and the Amoco Cadiz and the Atlantic Empress in the West Indies and the Deepwater Horizon in the Mexican Gulf and, well, you get the picture.

All these rigs and tankers dumping hundreds of millions of gallons. Let me say that again: hundreds of millions of gallons of crude sludge oozing into our water supply. But let’s give them one more chance Or maybe they’ve had enough chances.

You know, for decades, experts have predicted we’d eventually run out of oil. They’ve said that as a country, we should produce and use more renewable fuels. As individuals, we should be more conservative with our resources. And yet, the oil keeps flowing.

Look, every human endeavor comes with risks. Should we just ignore them? You might not be worried about our oil supply. Maybe you don’t think we’ll ever run out, or maybe you think that we should just use it all up. Maybe you don’t believe we’re causing climate change. But what if you’re wrong?

I say we should make a few, relatively small sacrifices now rather than do nothing and possibly expedite the demise of our species. Let’s at least move in the right direction.

And if you think that’s crazy, listen to this: Some scientists theorize our failure to find intelligent life in other galaxies might be because those civilizations went extinct by using up all their energy. Are you listening, Pluto?